🧠 Essential reflexes: sleep, shaking & outdoors

Prepare together

• Save Malaysia's emergency number, 999, and your child's clinic contact. Keep your address accessible to caregivers.
• Take professional infant and child first-aid training.

Key habits

1. 1. Make every sleep safer

   Put baby on their back on a flat, firm mattress in their own clear cot or bassinet, in your room for at least six months. Use a fitted sheet only: no pillows, loose blankets, toys or bumpers. Avoid overheating and smoke exposure. Bedsharing, sofas and armchairs are not safe infant sleep spaces.

2. 2. Never shake a baby

   If crying overwhelms you, put baby on their back in their safe cot and take a brief break, checking back regularly. Ask another trusted adult to take over. Never shake, hit or roughly bounce a baby.

3. 3. Protect fingers and support play

   Secure doors against slamming and check sharp furniture edges. Offer tummy time only while baby is awake and directly supervised.

4. 4. Supervise around animals

   Stay close and actively supervise children around pets, even familiar ones. Give animals a separate place to retreat.

5. 5. Travel safely

   Use a correctly installed child car seat suited to your child's size and its instructions. Use rear-facing travel within the seat's limits. Unload on the pavement side where possible, and never leave a child alone in a vehicle.

6. 6. Recognise urgent illness

   A baby under three months with a temperature of 38°C or higher needs urgent medical assessment. Call 999 for breathing difficulty, blue colour, floppiness or unresponsiveness.

Same topic

• 🧸 Babyproofing the house (when baby goes mobile)
• 🍬 Preventing choking and swallowing hazards
• 🛁 Water safety and drowning prevention
• 🪜 Preventing falls at home

Read next

• 😴 Safer sleep for baby: reducing SIDS risk
• 😭 Getting through evening crying
• 🚗 Installing a car seat correctly
• 🚨 Getting trained in infant & child first aid